Vertical fore grips have become popular with firearms, such as rifles and machine pistols. A fore grip provides the operator with a front handle to both support and help aim the firearm. Fore grips usually include an elongated handle that can be gripped by the hand not operating the trigger. Often, the fore grip is removable and attached to the firearm by a bracket that attaches to a rail (such as a picatinny rail) underneath the firearm.
In addition to elongated handles, vertical fore grips have included other variations such as bipods or tripods to support the firearm while firing it.
Often the rail type brackets underneath the firearm are used to support accessories such as lights. However, using a removable fore grip takes away the space that has been used for the accessory lights. Thus, operators often have to choose whether to use the removable fore grips on the bottom facing rails or use accessory lights. To generally solve this problem it has been known to attach lights to vertically-extending fore grips, but the operation of same has been limited.
The disclosures of U.S. Pat. No. 8,127,485 entitled “GUN WITH MOUNTED SIGHTING DEVICE” to Moore et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,312,665 entitled “SIDE-MOUNTED LIGHTING DEVICE” to Moore et al. and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/707,312 entitled “SIGHTING DEVICE REPLICATING SHOTGUN PATTERN SPREAD” to Moore et al. are incorporated herein by reference.